Are you completely fed up with the immigrant detention story? Or do you want more clarity? I’m fed up, but keep trying to be sure I understand and can think and write competently about the whole thing.

Daniel Boorstin ( the former Librarian of Congress) wrote a now classic among his many books called The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, 1961. Steven Hayward called it to mind yesterday. I cannot find my copy, but it’s buried in one of my bookcases. Here’s Hayward:

“Boorstin defines a “pseudo-event” as not merely a fact or real event that happened, but a fact or event that is made into “news” of a certain kind by a deliberate and artificial process. You might think of Boorstin’s analysis as no more than the Deep Theory of Public Relations (or as the first analysis of what we today like to call “fake news”), and many of the examples in the book come from the corporate world. Here is some of his description of the dynamics of a “pseudo-event”—see how many aspects of this you can make out in the present controversy:”

1. It is not spontaneous, but comes about because someone has planned, planted, or incited it. Typically it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview. [More on this point in a moment—SH.]

2. It is planted primarily (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced. Therefore, its occurrence is arranged for the convenience of the reporting or reproducing media. Its success is measured by how widely it is reported. . .

3. Its relation to the underlying reality of the situation is ambiguous. Its interest arises largely from the very ambiguity. . . Without some of this ambiguity a pseudo-event cannot be very interesting.

Steven Hayward accompanied his article with the shocking photo of an armed federal agent pointing his gun at Elian Gonzalez. That was the Clinton administration.

House Immigration Bills Would Produce Starkly Different Results in Green Card Numbers

By Jessica M/ Vaughan on June 20. 2018

The two competing immigration bills up for a vote in the House on Thursday offer significantly different amnesty provisions, and would have very different effects on future immigration flows. The so-called “compromise bill” crafted by House Speaker Paul Ryan would result in a net increase of 2.12 million more green cards through amnesty and chain migration over the next 15 years. In contrast, the bill crafted by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (HR 4760) would result in a net decrease in green cards of 1.23 million over the next 15 years because it offers a much smaller amnesty and makes prompt, deep cuts to chain migration categories.

Here are the details behind the calculations: The Ryan bill offers amnesty and a path to citizenship for an estimated 2.2 million direct beneficiaries. This includes an estimated 1.9 million aliens believed to be potentially eligible for the proposed amnesty, which has the same basic qualifying criteria as President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program (arrived in the United States before 2007 while under age 16, continuous presence for at least five years, and present illegally in June, 2012). This population includes those who could have but did not apply for DACA or who were too young to apply.

Do read the whole thing. They will be voting today. If you don’t like what they are doing, you can go to whitehouse.gov and leave a message for President Trump asking him to veto.

Did you see this image today on CNN emphasizing the “crying child ‘ripped’ from the arms of his mother.” It went viral. It’s a a picture designed to catch at the heartstrings, and apparently, it did.

Unfortunately, as in much of the fake news department, all is not as it seems. As Zero Hedge reported: the picture is being completely taken out of context—and does not show what it is purported to show.

Most of those sharing it claim the image depicts a boy detained by ICE under the new Trump administration policy of referring all people who cross the border illegally for criminal prosecution.

Among them was journalist and filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas who posted the photo last week on Twitter, saying “this is what happens when a government believes people are ‘illegal.” Kids in cages. ‘favorited’ 38,000 times (and 10,000 more on Facebook)…but it’s a lie.

As CNN is forced to admit,the picture was actually taken during a June 10 protest against White House immigration policies at Dallas City Hall, as first reported by fact-checking site Snopes.

Here’s the whole piece from Zero Hedge, with “the rest of the story.” And the rest of the pictures too, to show clearly how it was meant to deceive. (In the larger photo below, you can see the little kid’s blue shirt and pants at the bottom far right of the cage)